The most important thing about this year’s Oscars — at least for fashion — is the timing. Sunday evening’s ceremony falls almost two weeks later than past years, meaning that the Paris and Milan fashion week shows have all wrapped — and luxury houses can focus on the awards.
Already, designers are flocking to Los Angeles post-shows, in order to be on the ground this weekend, attend events, and work more closely with the talent they’re dressing, says Keith Baptista, co-founder of creative agency Prodject. For many of these designers, it’s their first Oscars at the helm of their current houses. That’s because it’s the first Academy Awards ceremony since September’s flurry of creative director debuts that kicked off an industry-wide reset. Many of the most prominent houses on the Oscars carpet — Chanel, Dior, Valentino, Gucci — have different creative directors than they did last year. (Matthieu Blazy, Jonathan Anderson, Pierpaolo Piccioli, and Demna, respectively.) Demna, for instance, will attend the Sunday afterparty Gucci is co-hosting with Guy Oseary.
“For so many new creative directors, this is their moment to really show the world — not just the fashion community and the people at the shows — their new direction and make a statement,” says luxury consultant Robert Burke. It’ll be a litmus test of sorts. “It is an important inflection point that will test the audience’s receptivity to the creative director’s new narrative around a brand’s name,” says Thomaï Serdari, professor of marketing and director of the Luxury and Retail MBA at New York University.
Agents and stylists are relieved by both the scheduling shift and the designer shuffle slowdown. Over the last couple of years, archival pulls have dominated red carpets. Hailed as a flex by those with an eye for deep cuts, this move was in part due to a lack of clothes, says UTA agent Taylor Rahmani. Last awards season, newly appointed designers took the opportunity to tease their takes on their new houses. Sarah Burton soft launched her Givenchy with a men’s teaser on Timothée Chalamet, and an archival remake on Elle Fanning. But beyond the select few teasers, custom looks were harder to wrangle in 2025, as brands prepared for their creative director debuts in the latter half of the year. So the biggest difference from this year to last, Rahmani says, is that there are clothes at the ready — and they’re not hinged on the past. “There is the capacity to do customs, whereas last year there was a lot of limbo and studios really couldn’t do what they wanted to do.”
For fashion, awards show stakes have changed dramatically. The opportunity for a red carpet moment has ballooned from the Academy Awards to an entire awards season. There are millions of dollars on the line in brand deals, and hundreds of millions in media impact value (MIV). For luxury fashion’s new guard, this weekend’s stakes are high, and brand control is low. “There is no major interference in a fashion show. There is a ton of interference in the Oscars ceremony,” Serdari says. “That’s the real test, because it happens live — not six months later and after the intermediaries have worked their magic to reinforce the message of the brand as it hits retail shelves.” (MIV measures the impact of brand mentions across voices and channels, assigning a monetary value to media exposure.)